Demystifying SQL Server Differential Database Backups

Odd Man Out

SQL Server has three backup types. Two you have heard of and used. One, while useful, isn’t very well understood.

Let’s start with a technical recap of the three backup types for SQL Server.

1. Full Database Backup

When you request a full backup, SQL Server dumps all the data pages from your database, metadata about how your database is stored on disk and finally enough of the transaction log to bring the database back into a consistent state. There are a few things you need to know about the full backup semantics. When you take a full backup it makes a few changes. Those changes are tracked in two places in the database and one in MSDB. The changes tracked in the database allow us to then use transaction log backups and differential database backups. The data logged to MSDB isn’t critical for restoring your backups. It does make it much easier to do so. Full backups are considered our “base” backup type. Every other backup type can use a full database backup as its base. Even though a full backup does capture some of the transaction log it doesn’t clear the log. If you are in simple mode, the normal checkpoint process will clear the log. If you are in bulk load or full recovery mode, you will need to take a transaction log backup to clear the log.

2. Transaction Log Backup

Transaction log backups are a critical part of any recovery plan. Without them you can’t restore up to the minute. If your database is in anything other than simple recovery mode, your only supported option to clear the log is a transaction log backup. Transaction log backups are serial by nature. The log restored depends on either a full or differential for its base and any log backups done before the current log you wish to apply.

3. Differential Database Backup

Like a full database backup, the differential backs up data pages and enough of the transaction log to bring the database back into a consistent state. Unlike full or transaction log backups, the differential backup captures all changes since the last full backup occurred. The information on changed data pages is stored internally in the database and doesn’t require any information from MSDB. The map of changed data pages only gets reset on the next full backup. Transaction log backups or other differential database backups will not reset the changed data map. You can think of transaction log backups as incremental backups. People coming from a systems administration background can get tripped up and treat differential backups like incremental backups. This can cause a significant waste of time when restoring your database since you only need to apply the full backup and the most current differential, or the differential you are interested in to get your database back into a recovered state.

Understanding Differential Database Backups

Most people are put off by the nature of differential backups mainly due to the amount of space they can grow to and the extra complexity they can add to your recovery plans. If you don’t manage them, you can quickly run into a differential that is larger than the full it is based on. Also, any data page alterations are tracked. For example, if you take a full backup then perform full index reorganization on a heavily fragmented index you can end up with very large differential backups. File shrinks with full reorganizations also have the same effect. Even though the actual data hasn’t changed, you end up with differential database backups that are unwieldy and difficult to manage. If you miss a full backup in your schedule, your differentials again may grow larger than your full backup.

There are several cases where differential database backups are a pivotal key to recovering your database quickly and with as little data loss as possible. Let’s take a look at a few scenarios.

Shortening Recovery Time

This alone should be good enough reason for you to investigate differential backups. Every restore operation has a cost-in-time associated to it. Remember, even if a transaction log backup is virtually empty, there is a cost-in-time to spool up and tear down the restore session for each log backup you apply. Not to mention replaying the transactions in the logs. In many cases, it can be much faster to apply a differential backup than applying multiple transaction log backups. By skipping all the data manipulation and just replacing the altered pages you are reducing the amount of IO required to restore.

Database in Simple Recovery Mode

There may be situations where you aren’t concerned with up-to-the-minute recovery but still need something better than weekly full backups to meet your recovery goals. Differentials fit in well here. By leveraging differential backups, you can take a single full once a week and daily differentials to cut down on the space needed to store your backups. Also, since differential backups contain all the changes since the last full, to recover you only need the full backup and the differential backup of the time interval you want to restore to. I recommend keeping your differentials just like you would your transaction log backups so if you need to recover your database into another environment or if you suffer corruption in one of your differentials, you still have as much data as possible to restore.

Large Database with Minimal Data Change

With today’s large disk capacities, it isn’t unusual to see multi-terabyte databases with years of data in them. Moving our full backup schedule out to every two weeks or every month and supplementing with differentials is an excellent way to conserve backup space and shorten time to recovery. Again, we only need the last full, the last differential and any transaction logs after the differential was taken to get us back up to the minute.

Increasing Recoverability

if you only take a full database backup once a week and transaction log backups every 15 minutes, you could end up applying over 670 logs to get your database back on line if you have a failure at the end of the week. If you have any errors in one of the transaction log backups, everything after that is pretty much useless to you. If it dies at backup 599, it may not be the end of your business. If it is log 38, it could mean a week’s worth of data gone. Since differential backups don’t break the LSN chain and transaction log backups don’t reset the changed data map, you can use either backup type even when one or the other may have had an error. Differentials allow us to bridge gaps in our transaction log since we can apply any transaction logs taken after the differential backup. This is one of the real strengths of differential backups. So, if you are doing weekly full backups, daily differential backups and transaction log backups every 15 minutes, you are covered in two ways. Normally, you would restore the full then the latest differential backup followed by any additional transaction logs. If you had a differential backup corrupted but your transaction logs, were fine you could still restore fully.

Repairing Log Shipping

Another great use of differentials is to repair your log shipped databases. If anything happens to the LSN chain, in most cases the only way to repair your log ship target is to start over again from a full and then apply all the logs to get it back up to current. If this is a large database or if there are a lot of transaction log backups to recover this could leave you exposed for quite a while. You can always take a differential backup, apply that to the log ship target then restart your log shipping from that point. I have used this technique successfully over the years when there have been network outages causing our log ship targets to fall way behind cutting catch up time from hours to minutes.

Final Thoughts

Incorporating differential backups will add complexity to your backup strategy but the benefits can be staggering. Between the storage savings and reduction in recovery time it’s clear that differential backups should be in your tool belt. I would also encourage you to practice restoring using your differential backups. Try out different failure scenarios like failed transaction logs or differential backups. Make sure you understand how to restore up to the minute and stop at a specific time now that you have differentials in the mix.

This is a re-blog from an article I wrote for SWWUG on April 19th 2012